Teachers working together to improve student achievement in reading and writing

February 08, 2008

Close Reading

When Every Word Counts

In our everyday lives, we don’t pay close attention to every word we read. We read for the gist of things, concentrating more on big ideas than on subtle shades of meaning, new vocabulary, and unusual turns of phrase. This is just as it should be. There’s too much information in the world for us to ponder every bit of it every time we skim the newspaper or scan a web page.

But there are times when close reading is required. When we’re
following directions, signing a contract, or taking a test that holds
the key to our future, every word matters. Reading closely also makes a
difference when we’re learning to read. If we gloss over unfamiliar
words, we never get the chance to learn them. If we ignore complex
logic, we miss the opportunity to improve our own. If we skip the
hardest parts of great novels and poems, we undermine the purpose of
reading them in the first place.

This is why teaching close reading is so important to me. When I
conference with individual readers, or teach a lesson to the class, I
encourage kids to use every strategy they have to wring out every last
drop of meaning from every word they encounter.

We can work on close reading using any text, but for formal lessons, I
often pull out short pieces I’ve written myself specifically for the
purpose of giving kids a challenge:

Test AnxietyWhen she saw her score, she became depressed. Or was she elated? After
all, her strategy had been successful. But this was beyond
expectations. People would be suspicious. There would only be rumors at
first, just speculation. She rubbed the inside of her forearm. She
hadn’t even bothered to wash it off yet. And if she chose to keep it
always as a trophy or a talisman, could anyone decipher the code? A
present from her parents, she had told everyone; an easy way to obscure
her ruse. But now, with perfection staring back at her from the page,
she surmised that her plan had worked too well. She cast a furtive
glance around the room to spy on the scores of others. The difference
would be telling. She timidly approached the teacher’s desk, feigned
illness, and dashed to the bathroom.

The first thing we do is read it out loud together. I love choral
reading because it gives me a chance to show kids how to read
carefully. We try to maintain a slow and steady speed. The kids usually
run ahead but I hold them back by focusing their attention on phrasing
like this:

When she saw her score,
she became depressed.
Or was she elated?
After all,
her strategy had been successful.
But this was beyond expectations.
People would be suspicious.
There would only be rumors at first,
just speculation.

When we’ve read the passage once through, I ask them to tell me what
it’s about in a single sentence. We usually come up with something like
this: “It’s about a girl who cheated on a test and now she feels bad
about what she did.”

This one-sentence summary is crucial to our close reading process
because it establishes the context. In close reading, kids will be
depending on context clues to make inferences. But often, they don’t
have an explicit understanding of it. A simple summary, even if it
isn’t entirely correct, makes all the difference.

Once we understand the context of the whole, we can begin to work on
the parts. I like to work sentence-by-sentence. Specifically, I want
kids to go back to the first sentence and tell me if there are any
words, phrases, or ideas we need to talk about in order to have a more
complete understanding.

When she saw her score, she became depressed.

In the first sentence, we need to talk about two things: What does
“depressed” mean? And why did the girl become that way when saw her
score? If there’s not enough information yet, we’ll read one sentence
further.

Or was she elated?

Now we’ve got another question to answer: What does “elated” mean?

From the way the sentences sound, “depressed” and “elated” are probably
opposites. So now I’ll have the kids make some guesses, or inferences,
about what “depressed” means. It’s a word they think they all know but
in the process of defining it, we’re likely to discover that the
meaning is a little richer than they might have thought. Typical
guesses include: “sad”, “tired”, “angry”, “hurt”. Now I’ll ask kids to
substitute their guesses back into the sentence to see which ones do
the best job of clarifying the meaning. In this case, “sad” and “hurt”
fit the bill.

We continue this process for every sentence in the passage. When we
finish, we retell the passage using our own words and some of the extra
information we’ve picked up about it along the way. I also try to pose
so-called “big questions” that apply to their entire passage. These are
typically open-ended questions with no right or wrong answer. All I
require is that kids support their answers by citing the text. For
“Test Anxiety”, I ask questions like, “What is the girl running off to
do?” or “What is she most afraid of?” or “What do you think will happen
in the near future?”

There are several things I like to point out to kids about close reading:

We don’t have to know the exact meanings of words. It’s
hard to say what the exact meaning of a single word is. Even with a
dictionary, it isn’t always possible to come up with a definition that
exactly matches the way a word is used in context. A good guess, or
two, is a great way to figure things out, and to learn new words at the
same time.

Meanings change in context. The word “depressed” means one
thing to a girl getting back a test and another thing entirely to a
psychologist diagnosing a patient. It’s important to know what words
mean, but what they mean is often determined as much by context as by
the word itself.

More guesses mean more meaning. If we stop after making
the single guess, “sad”, we know we get most of the meaning. But
doesn’t the last guess, “hurt”, give us just a little bit more of an
understanding of how this girl feels? Usually, the meaning of a word in
context will be defined by the overlap of several guesses. Making
several guesses, as opposed to just one, also insulates readers from
the problem of guessing wrong. The reader in this situation who goes
with “tired” or “angry” makes a mistake. But with the other words to
choose from, it’s easy to see which fits better in context.

Wrong guesses are not a problem. Because we’re always
going back to see how our guesses fit with the sentence, we’ll be able
to catch most of the errors we make. Even a wrong guess helps us
improve our comprehension because we’re discovering words that aren’t
part of the solution and we’re revisiting the context one more time to
evaluate them. Knowing that something doesn’t make sense is often the
precursor to discovering something else that does.

This process of identifying important words and attempting to define
them in context leads us to an important discovery about close reading.
Close reading depends on the coordination of three essential reading
strategies:

Question. We start with questions. What’s confusing?
What’s important? What does that word mean? What don’t we understand?
Close reading begins with any question we might have about the text as
we move through it sentence-by-sentence. Nothing happens until we ask a
question.

Infer. Every answer we offer is an inference. We hope the
answers are right, of course, but often they’re not. Even a relatively
simple word like “depressed” can only be understood in context as the
overlap of two good guesses.

Clarify. Every answer, or inference, has to be checked
out. Specifically, we hope to use our inference to understand more
about what we’re reading. The goal is that our understanding becomes
clearer as we go along. If it doesn’t, we throw out our inference, go
back to our question, and start the process over again.

Question, infer, clarify; question, infer, clarify. To get the most out
of a challenging text, readers have to move through this circular
process over and over.

It’s important for me to practice close often with kids because I need
them to internalize the question-infer-clarify process. Breakdowns in
comprehension can almost always be traced back to readers leaving out
one or more of the three steps.

Start with a question. If readers neglect to question,
they never dig deeply into a text to begin with. All they have is their
surface comprehension, and even when this is very good, it isn’t as
deep as what they might otherwise be able to achieve if they would
simply start by asking a question or two.

Just take a guess. I can often get kids to ask questions
but many won’t make inferences. They tell me that they’re worried about
getting something wrong. As we’ve just discussed, even wrong answers
can be helpful. So I have to help kids break the habit of not making
guesses. The tendency to think or say, “I don’t know”, as the default
response is probably the single most serious impediment to kids
improving their reading comprehension.

Try to make things clearer. Questions and inferences get
the ball rolling but they don’t finish the job. For every question
asked and inference made, we have to go back and attempt to use what
we’ve just come up with to clarify our understanding. Without this
step, our comprehension can actually degrade as we pile up incorrect
inferences and begin to confuse ourselves.

As kids move through this process, I like them to mark up the text
they’re reading with a record of their comprehension. There are several
ways we can do this:

On the board. I often start by copying the passage
double-spaced on the board. As we work the text together, I note the
group’s questions, inferences, and clarifications in the margins and in
between the lines. Working as a group, there’s lots of comprehension to
write down. Kids are often impressed with the volume of their own
thinking and the fact that, in the end, our understanding of the
passage is longer than the passage itself.

Printed handout. When I want kids to work on their own, I
print out the passage, double-spaced, and centered on a page so there’s
lots of room to write all around it. Kids record their comprehension
individually and then we share our results.

Copy double-spaced in journal. Though the kids like to
complain about it, it’s not a big deal for me to ask them to copy a
passage into their reading journals. I ask them to do this regularly
using a passage from the book they’re reading, so they get used to it
pretty quickly.

Teaching kids to mark up their text is a big part of what makes this
such a valuable activity. For the kids, it helps them see how much work
there is to be done on a single line or paragraph. For me, it provides
an excellent assessment of how kids are thinking while they read. Short
of having a conference and trying to pry open their heads to see what’s
inside, reviewing their understanding in the margins and in between the
lines of a close reading passage gives me the best vantage point on
their comprehension that I can imagine.

Close reading is an exercise I try to do often with kids. I also
reinforce it when we conference or share. At first, it’s tedious and
time consuming; the first time we do it, it might take 30 minutes or
more. But once we get the hang of it, we can close read a short passage
in 5-10 minutes.

If I want kids to become better readers I have to challenge them with
tougher texts. But I also have to give them a reliable process for
working through those texts. Close reading with question-infer-clarify
and text mark-up is the best activity I’ve come across. It helps kids
internalize important reading behaviors, it helps them develop their
vocabulary, and it helps them improve their stamina for critical
reading. Perhaps best of all, it gives low readers a set of tools they
can use when faced with texts above their reading level.

Though I’m inclined to introduce close reading with fiction in Language
Arts, it works for informational texts in the content areas as well.
The question-infer-clarify process is perfect for working through a
textbook chapter, and the notes kids generate reinforce their
comprehension and often aid in answering end-of-chapter questions.
Close reading is also an essential skill for maximizing student
performance on high stakes state tests.

2 Comments

I'll be honest, my past experience with teaching students to dissect text for information has been pitiful. I am usually as frustrated as my students are. We seem to tackle these tasks for the sake of getting them done, lacking the typical spark that reader's workshop carries.

I am eager to try this process of question-infer-clarify. I especially like the clarify part where we can insert our inferences back into the text to see if it makes sense. This will go over so much better than the typical teacher response, "Look it up if you don't know." There may come a time for looking things up, but it will have a context of questions and thoughts of our own as motivation.

This process, and the marking up of the text, will also be easy for the students to pick up since they are already accustomed to writing conversations based on the read like a reader/writer model. I will put the text on the smart board and have the students come up and record their thoughts with their favorite colour and style of pen. Motivation. Extrinsic, but I'll take it.

How fast would you move from a novel selection to something from a scientific article?

Close reading has been my favorite strategy for awhile. It's taken me a bit of time to get it to where it's useful on a regular basis. My sophomores just took the AIMS test and reported that forcing themselves to question, infer, and clarify helped them do better on the test. Kids also loved using it as we read a challenging play. They were really proud of the extra meaning they were able to squeeze out of the words.

Thanks for the tip about summarizing it in a sentence first. That's something we were doing afterward, but I see how it's much more useful to start with a context.